In this video we check out two of the Dragon Medical Mobile Apps (releasing later this year) for the iPhone, Dragon Medical Mobile Dictation and Medical Mobile Search.  We recorded this video from Nuance’s booth at the HIMSS conference

Nuance, the makers of Dragon Medical Dictation, a favorite dictation service among many physicians, announced at HIMSS they are bringing the same medical transcription service to the iPhone.

Many readers may have noticed the recent arrival of a free Nuance “Dragon” app in the App store.  This simple app allows the user to speak directly into the iPhone and receive a nicely transcribed text document 15-30 seconds later, ready for email or for copy and paste.

At that time, Nuance did not specify their future intentions, but many speculated a medical version would be forthcoming.  Indeed, at HIMSS, Nuance announced three new iPhone medical apps: Mobile Dictation, Mobile Search, and Mobile Recorder, all named with the prefix Dragon Medical (i.e. “Dragon Medical Mobile Dictation”, etc).

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I interviewed Robert Quinn, Senior Vice President of Engineering and CTO of Epocrates at HIMSS 2010, and he spoke candidly about the many features Epocrates electronic health record will have, especially related to the iPhone.

Yes, that’s correct. Epocrates, the mobile medical app that nearly has the distinction of being the one “indispensable” application for every physician’s smart phone, is going to have a big brother soon.

The ten year old company, based in San Mateo California, believes its base of more than 900,000 clinicians worldwide and its experience with mobile medical development gives it the wherewithal for understanding what physicians need and expect from a mobile Electronic Health Record (EHR).

They are targeting solo and small physician practices and with a price point that is expected to be very competitive. “This was a logical next step for Epocrates,” said Rose Crane, chief executive officer of Epocrates, when making the announcement.

Integration with the iPhone

I had the opportunity to speak with Robert Quinn, Senior Vice President of Engineering and Chief Technical Officer about the forthcoming product. They are planning a shipping target of Fall 2010. The product will have both a mobile iPhone app and web interface. They plan on integrating the features of the iPhone, such as the camera, as well as dictation directly into the app, an interesting feature especially in light of the announcement today by Nuance that they will be shipping a medical transcription application for the iPhone.

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It’s fair to say almost everyone has bought at least one accessory for their iPhone.  My own collection consists of two items, a simple protective case, and protective case with a built in battery.  I can’t emphasize how crucial my battery case has been, especially when I hit the 20th hour of a 30 hour on call shift and my iPhone’s native battery is about to die.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the development of iPad accessories, and how companies such as Griffin, Gelaskins, Sanho, and others are scrambling to manufacture products as fast as possible.  Time is money in the accessory business, and the iPod/iPhone accessory business is big money — totaling 3.7 billion in 2009 alone.

Medical app developers have already mentioned how they will be customizing their products for the iPad.  Epocrates and Macpractice are examples of two significant players who have already committed to the iPad platform — and there are more.

With that said, there’s no doubt some health care professionals will be using an iPad, whether for reading medical books or for EMR purposes.  So then two key questions come to mind: What accessories do we want to see and whats already out there?  The following are 5 key accessories:

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Google’s smartphone operating system – Android – has been around for well over a year, yet the marketplace continues to lag behind Apple’s App Store with its meager collection of useful medical apps.  The biggest player in mobile medical reference software is now changing this perception.  Today Epocrates announced the availability of a free beta version, Epocrates Rx, for the Android platform, officially making it an android medical app. [We recently did a full review of Epocrates, including Epocrates Rx, for the iPhone].

This is exciting news for health care professionals who have Android phones – because their numbers are growing.  Google recently announced 60,000 Android handsets are shipping each day, coming out to 5.4 million handsets per quarter.  As a reference, Apple sold 8.7 million iPhones last quarter.

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It is a great pleasure to present this interview with Pieter Kubben, a Dutch neurosurgeon who is an impressive amalgam of clinician, researcher, and software engineer. He is currently in a neurosurgical residency while completing a PhD in intraoperative MRI-guided surgery for brain gliomas. As if this is not enough, as a “hobby” (his term), he also writes software, with a particular interest in computerized decision-support systems.

He has three iPhone applications currently in the App Store, including his newest one implementing the WHO surgical checklist(iTunes link). His other apps, Neuromind and SLIC, have been downloaded 8,000 times. Importantly, he is not just writing the software, but is also publishing his ideas in medical journals to spur changes in the way clinical decisions are made in the future. We encourage you to follow his blog at http://digitalneurosurgeon.com or on Twitter @DigNeurosurgeon. It is exciting to see a one individual with so many talents and to think about the great ideas yet to come from someone with such broad perspectives – we delve into some of those ideas in this interview.

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